Harrow: How do you solve a gay teenager's murder without promoting homophobia?

 

According to the Hulu blub, Daniel Harrow is "a brilliant forensic pathologist who solves cases that others can't."  Naturally.  I'll bet they are all about serial killers...yawn.  But Episode 8 is about "the death of a "young, gay student," so I tuned in to see how homophobic it was.

Prelude:  Someone rowing in the river sees a body on the shore.

Scene 1: Harrow wakes up, notices that his bedmate is gone, makes breakfast, and looks at old photos.  Dead wife, the oldest cliche in the heterosexist writer's manual. I'm already disgusted, and we haven't even met the gay student yet.  

Scene 2: Harrow goes to work in his elegant, ornate coroner's office, and yells at a woman named Pavich for performing an autopsy in his exam room.  She explains: a body came in, and she hasn't done an autopsy for a long time, so she couldn't resist. She's planning to take a job in Geneva, which will upset the boss.

Scene 3: The boss, Bryan, trying to get ahold of Pavich, without success: she's ghosting him to avoid having to reveal the Geneva job.  He and his coworkers discuss a case about "tyres."  Is this England? I'm watching on mute with subtitles, so I haven't heard the accents.

Meanwhile, the hunky Jesse (Ulu Lakutefu, left) gets up and smooches on his wife or girlfriend, who quickly hides whatever she was doing on her laptop.  This show is apparently not the corpse-of-the-week.  He invites her to have sex, but she refuses.  He suggests a weekend on the coast; she refuses.  The plot thickens.

Scene 4: Back at the autopsy, a Stick-in-the-Mud Guy comes in and gets all persnickety about Pavich playing around inside a corpse.  He's already applied for her job, so now everyone knows that she's leaving!  She yells at him and stalks off.

Then Hunky Assistant (Remi Hii) comes in, and tells Harrow that he's taking David to a resort for his 30th birthday.  A gay coworker!   Harrow tells him to finish the autopsy.  He leaves and gets a phone call: "It's Dass.  Fancy getting out of the office for a bit?"  Definitely England.  We don't use "fancy" as a verb in America.

Scene 5: A woman photographing the corpse from the river.  The guy playing the corpse has a nice bulge.  Harrow arrives and asks for the details: he's Rhys Weir, 17 years old, a member of his high school rowing team, dead from a massive skull fracture.  It looks like he let himself into the rowing shed, got a boat, and slipped and hit his head as he tried to launch it.  But...he's been dead since about 2:00 am. Who goes rowing at 2:00 am?

They interview the rowing coach: all team members have keys to the shed, but they aren't allowed to go rowing before 5:00 am.  By the way, there was a big rowing meet yesterday, and Rhys flubbed a stroke, resulting in his team losing the championship. She continues: Rhys came out as gay last year, but all of his schoolmates and faculty have been totally supportive.  

His Mom is gone, and his Dad is in Dubai.  He mostly lived by himself.  Letting a minor live without an adult guardian?  We would be screaming "child abuse!" in the U.S.

 A teammate named Luke left an instagram message: "Thanks for losing, Asshole."  His scholarship is in jeopardy due to the lost championship.  A suspect!

Scene 6: Back at  the office, Harrow and Hunky Assistant begins an autopsy.  Nothing cut open yet, a nice rear view of the naked guy playing the corpse. Now turn him over, so we can see his dangly bits.  Injuries consistent with slipping and hitting your head on the concrete.  End of story?  

They turn the body over (nice chest, no dangly bits).  Wait -- he was going into anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic reaction. That's why he fell and hit his head. 

Scene 7:  Rhys must have been exposed to the allergin at the boat ramp.  But there was no food in his backpack or his car.  Harrow and the lady cop he's flirting with check the boat shed.  No food, but they find Rhys' notebook.  Someone left him a note: "Leave him alone!"  A jealous boyfriend or girlfriend?

Hunky Assistant calls -- Rhys hadn't eaten anything all day, but there was a strange base protein on his tongue.  He also had been drinking.  So he does the autopsy, and the genius forensic pathologist does regular detective work?

Scene 8: Harrow and the lady cop he's flirting with interview the teammates.  Sean, Rhys, Luke, and Ash all went to Ash's house after the competition, to drink vodka and console each other.  Rhys left at 1:00 am.  They let a friend drive drunk?   They don't know what the "Leave him alone!" is about; Rhys didn't have a boyfriend.

As they leave, Harrow stumbles upon Luke fighting with another guy.  Luke won't say what's going on.

Scene 9:  Back at the office, Harrow teases Stick-in-the-Mud Guy about applying for Pavich's job (remember, she's moving to Geneva?).  "No way!  You're a loose cannon.  You disregard protocols!  You don't play by the rules."  Like every cop, detective, surgeon, teacher, and forensic pathologist who has ever appeared in any movie or tv show.

Hunky Assistant bring in the lab report:  the allergin was semen!   Turns out that semen allergy is a real thing, but heteronormative medical reports assume that the semen is going into a vagina.  But not anyone's semen, just one particular guy's.  Who would have been there when he started choking, but didn't bother to call for help.  Let's find him with a DNA analysis!  Fortunately, they have a fully equipped DNA lab right there at the morgue.

Scene 10: They ask all of the boys that Rhys was with that night to provide a DNA sample.  Sean (Joe Klocek) says he's happy to provide one, but his Dad is outraged: "Grr, grr, why are you maligning my son's reputation by implying that he's a poof? I'm calling my lawyer!"  

A police diver looking for clues in the river stumbles upon a human skull!  Back at headquarters, Stick-in-the-Mud Guy and Pavich argue about who should do the forensic analysis.  

More stuff about the "two tyres" case, which also is the case of Hunky Jesse's wife or girlfriend from Scene 3 (remember her).  

Scene 11:  Back to Harrow.  More bad news: all of the boys are refusing to let them give DNA samples, so they have to go to the Supreme Court for an order, which will take weeks.  Harrow rushes to an opulent mansion and yells at Sean: "Why did you change your mind?  You don't need your father's permission to give a DNA sample.  Let's go to the station and do one!"  Sean yells "You can't be here!" and slams the door in his face.

More stuff about the "two tyres" case. Harrow is personally involved.   I'm beginning to think that it's the A plot, and the guy who died of semen poisoning is the B plot.

Scene 12:  Back at the lab, Harrow tells Hunky Assistant -- Simon -- that all of the boys have refused DNA samples.  How long has it been?  Rhy's corpse is still lying naked on the examination table, untouched.  Didn't they open up his stomach?

Harrow notices something else: there was algae all over the boat ramp, and on Rhys' clothes, but none in his head wound.  How is that possible?  They make a cast of the wound and compare it with the boat ramp steps.  Not a match!  He fell somewhere else, and then someone brought him to the ramp as a cover-up.

Next, they sneak into the yard of Sean's opulent mansion, and check it against the fountain.  A match!  Rhys hit his head there!

Harrow confronts Sean:  "You and Rhys left together that night, and came here.  You had sex by the fountain, and then he went into shock and hit his head. It was an accident -- you're not to blame."  Then Dad comes out and starts yelling and punching everyone.

Spoiler alert: it was Dad!  He caught them together, got angry, and pushed Rhys.  Still an accident, but then he refused to call an ambulance.  Instead, they covered it  up.  (Dad left the note in Rhys' notebook, too.) The title actually broadcasts the solution: "Peccata Patriai," the sins of the father.  

Scene 13:  Rhys' Dad, finally back from Dubai, views the body.  Out in the hallway, Hunky Assistant talks to Harrow: "Things were rough for me when I came out in high school, but I thought gay kids today would have it easier.  I guess the world haven't changed as much as we'd like to think it has."  There was just one homophobe in the lot, and it was the boyfriend's dad.  Sounds like progress to me.

He's upset by the case, so Harrow loans him his car to drive up the coast with David.

There are still 10 minutes left for the A plot.

Beefcake:  Harrow's chest while he wakes up.  Lots of shots of the corpse in pristine condition, obviously meant to provide beefcake appeal. Other boys take off their shirts in flashbacks.

Gay Characters: Three.

Heterosexism: Harrow has a girlfriend and an ex-wife in the A plot.

Forensic Investigation: They actually use forensics to solve the case, although Simon does all the work

My Grade: B if Simon mentions being gay in other episodes.  Otherwise C.

Update: Simon is killed halfway through Season 2 (bury your gays).  His boyfriend David either doesn't appear, or appears in just one episode.